when she turned and saw what remained of her perfectly balanced group. “For the love of Pete. You moved!”
He smiled as she snapped her skirts straight and marched back, shooing her would-be rescuers back into position. It’d be a miracle if they got one picture done before the sun set. His cock stirred as he admired her. There was something completely charming about the woman when she went all martinet.
“I wouldn’t have thought her your type,” Ace mused.
Josie finally ducked beneath the little curtain attached to the camera. The position gave him a fine view of her admirable ass. Luke’s cock twitched again.
“Fine women are always my type.”
This time it was Ace who said, “Uh-huh.” No little amount of skepticism in those syllables.
Luke reconsidered his initial decision not to dabble with the little Easterner. Even a night or two in her arms before she headed back East might be worth it. She wasn’t a young girl. He’d place her age around twenty-five. The fact that she’d come out West to take pictures pointed to an independent nature. The two combined made for a chance she’d be open to a discreet encounter. Anticipation thrummed harder as he contemplated that possibility. It’d been a long time since a woman had been able to make him anticipate a glimpse of her.
Ace braced his foot on the bottom railing encompassing the porch and changed the subject. “Did I ever tell you I read your books?”
Shit. He hated for anyone to know he wrote fairy-tale novels about the Wild West for bored Easterners. Let alone read one. His writing was the one thing that connected him to the time before the massacre. The part that didn’t fit the life he’d first been forced into and then, later, chosen. The novels were the only part of the dream his mother had had for him that he’d managed to keep alive. “No.”
Ace just shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know why you’re so secretive about the damn things.”
Luke just shrugged. There was no way to explain he was embarrassed.
“I’ve known you since we were three years old,” Ace said exasperatedly. “Since before the damn Mexican army came into the village and wrecked our lives. I stood with you while we buried your parents. You stood with me while I cried over mine. Hell, you even dropped my bride into my lap when she got all stubborn.”
“What’d you expect me to do? You were being inconveniently self-sacrificing and she wanted to talk my ear off about it.”
“So you kidnapped her and plopped her in my bedroom?”
“Seemed the quickest way to bring back the peace.”
Ace just shook his head and took a sip. “There’s a get-it-done wild side to you. And the woman that’ll match up with you, she’s got to have that same drop-it-in-your-lap wildness.”
Maybe Ace did know him too well. All of the Hell’s Eight had been shifting from wild to leading more acceptable lives, from Caine to the wildest of them all—Shadow. All of them except Luke. “Wild doesn’t match well with acceptable.”
Ace snorted. “Shoot, Luke, there’s about a thousand different ways people interpret acceptable. You just need someone who sees it the way you do. Hester’s a good woman, but she wants a little house with a picket fence perched around it, lemonade on Sundays and a man who loves her. That’s not you.”
“I might have worked up to loving her.” Luke didn’t know why he was belaboring the point. Maybe because he just didn’t want Ace to be right. Or maybe he wanted to be proven wrong.
Ace shrugged. “Maybe you could’ve loved her enough eventually, but for sure she couldn’t ever love you like you need.”
Luke swallowed the last of his drink. “What the hell makes you think that?”
“Because she just sent me over here.”
“What the hell for? She’s up there kissing her husband.”
And she was. With all the enthusiasm that he wanted someone to feel for him. That he wanted to feel for someone, but never had. Sometimes, he wondered if he was dead inside, just a ghost of himself, haunting his own existence.
With a shake of his head, Ace reached into his pocket and drew out a note. “She asked me to give you this.”
Luke took the carefully folded piece of paper. As he opened it, Ace added, “Just like it says there. You need someone who can love you from the inside out.”
He cocked a brow at his friend. “You read it?”
Ace didn’t look even a little bit embarrassed. “Of course.”
Of course. Sometimes being wrapped so tightly in a knot with others was not a bonus. Luke glanced down at the slip of paper. “Then I guess I’d better catch up.”
Luke read the note written in Hester’s blunt, confident style.
Ace’s tone softened as Luke refolded it. “She couldn’t give you what you need, Luke.”
Luke nodded, looking beyond the celebration, beyond the limits of the ranch to the mountains beyond. “I know.”
Inside, the impatience he’d been fighting for months surged, anticipation rode double, prickling along his nerves. It’d been a long time since he’d had an adventure. With Ace married and Hester off the market, his reasons for staying in Simple were few. Almost nonexistent.
His gaze returned to Josie as she grabbed the tintype out of the camera and rushed to the wagon. She was such a mousy woman when not busy taking pictures. So shy he had yet to discern the color of her eyes, but once she brought out that wooden contraption of a camera, the real woman came front and center. Gone was the blushing, tongue-tied miss. And in her place was a woman who knew exactly how to get what she wanted.
It was an intriguing dichotomy. The glimpses of the woman beneath the crushing shyness were like catching a hint of a plot twist in a clever mystery novel. She intrigued and tempted. She was a challenge wrapped up in a self-deprecating package that was very intricately constructed; it just didn’t fit the sense he had in his gut about her. He would love to have a conversation with her, to find out if her mind matched the impact of her body. He had a feeling it did.
He watched as she stumbled getting into the wagon. As he knew she would, she looked over her shoulder at him, eyes narrowed as if he were to blame for her clumsiness. And maybe he was. If she was as aware of him as he was of her, then she had to know he’d been staring. Just as he suspected she’d been staring at him a time or two. A pang of regret wove through the anticipation of a new adventure. Unfortunately, Josie was one bit of exploration he was going to miss. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a fling. With a defiant toss of her head, she climbed into the wagon. And that fast, he reconsidered his decision. Some challenges just begged to be met.
* * *
HE WAS WATCHING HER. The well-dressed man with the broad shoulders and I-dare-you glare was watching her. Josie could feel his gaze like fingertips skimming her skin with sensual inquiry, looking for a reaction and getting it as her fingers trembled and her neck muscles tightened. If he were touching her, he’d feel the heat rise off her skin, see the pink flush of her cheeks. Oh darn, maybe he could see it from over there.
